This chart shows how the number of TV shows being made has exploded in the last few years

Some say we are living in a "golden age" of television. That may
or may not be true, but there's one thing that's certain: we're
living under an absolute torrent of scripted shows.

Over the last few years, the amount of original scripted shows
has roughly doubled, from 216 in 2010 to 419 in 2015. And it's
shown no signs of slowing down in 2016.

One big driver has been the entrance of streaming
heavyweights like Amazon and Netflix, which began making
originals in 2013. Netflix has said it
will release a whopping 1,000 hours of original shows and
movies in 2017. That would take you 41 days of
binge-watching to get through.

But it's not just Netflix. Cable networks have also ramped
up production in a serious way.

A recent chart from Deutsche Bank shows just how much the
landscape has exploded since 2002. Here it is:

Deutsche
Bank

This might be good for customers, who have more choice than
ever, but it's not good for some TV networks.

One such network, which analysts from Pacific Crest pointed
to in a recent note, is AMC.

AMC built its recent success out of high-quality dramas
like “Breaking Bad,” “Mad Men,” and “The Walking Dead.” But these
types of shows have become a commodity, according to the
analysts.

"The explosion in high-quality original dramas driven by
[streaming video on demand] companies [like Netflix] has
commoditized an area of programming that AMC helped popularize
and represents the core of the network's brand,” they wrote.

Pacific Crest's thesis is that there are simply too many
good serialized dramas being produced, especially by streaming
services, and AMC is suffering from the glut. Pacific Crest had
been hopeful that AMC’s strength of programming would continue to
help it prosper, but now the analysts are significantly lowering
their ad revenue estimates going forward, and think “continued
declines for existing AMC programming are likely."

That sounds dire, but networks like AMC may be in for
some relief.

FX boss John Landgraf says the sheer volume of shows will
have to go down soon. “I will still stick by my prediction that
we are going to hit a peak in the scripted series business within
the next two and a half years — and then see a decline — by
calendar (2019) at the latest,”
he said in August.